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For a great number of people, Ridley Scott’s 2000 epic Gladiator is some of his best work, in a filmography that includes Alien, Blade Runner, and The Martian. And the statistics would back that up: it won a handful Oscars, got nominated for many more, and I’m fairly certain it made a few bucks along the way as well. And above all else, I happened to like it quite a bit.
So there would be certain expectations that a 24-years-later sequel could be something special, playing in the same blood-stained sandbox as the first with certain threadbare connections to the original and a cast of A-list actors populating its cast.
This sliver of Ancient Rome is still living in the shadow of the late Maximus (Russell Crowe), the revered gladiator who was killed at the end of the fist film by then-Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) in front of his young nephew, Lucius (Spencer Treat Clark), and the boy’s mother Lucilla (Connie Nielsen, who returns for Gladiator II). Somehow in the interim, Lucius escapes his mother’s clutches and grows up to be a true fighting man (now played by a fully ripped Paul Mescal), who returns to Rome with revenge on his mind. He wants to tear down the entire empire, now being led by brothers and co-emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn, A Quite Place: Day One) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), who seem even more tyrannical and insane than their predecessor.
Lucius is obsessed with Maximus’s death, and it takes a reunion with his mother to understand the dead gladiator was more than just a hero to him; he was his father. And that knowledge not only gives him the fire to fight to the death (his or his opponent’s) but the birthright to carry out his mission to return Rome to its people. His first target is a mighty soldier in the Roman army, Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), who seems smart, compassionate, and utterly lost in this movie. Pascal is too interesting an actor and a seeker of a character’s quirks to play someone so totally flat and dull. He wears his armor well, but that’s the best thing I can say about his work here.
Far more interesting is Denzel Washington’s work as Macrimus, an advisor to the emperors, but also a cunning chess player of a politician who plays both sides of the war between Lucius and the hierarchy of Rome. He manipulates all around him, and watching Washington match wits with Derek Jacobi’s returning Gracchus is some of the film’s best acting.
I’d almost guess that one of the reasons director Scott even wanted to do this movie is because the political machinations and power grabs do seem to reflect something of the modern times, and that can occasionally be intriguing. But the reason most audience members will come to see Gladiator II are the battles in the Colosseum: man against man, man against animal (there’s a particularly tasty rhino fight that doesn’t go on nearly long enough), and even a sequence in which the venue is sealed off and flooded so that full-size ships can set sail and battle each other while sharks swim around looking for anyone who gets dumped overboard. I’m guessing this isn’t historically accurate, but it’s the best fight scene in the movie, so it worked for me.
I loved every battle sequence, but there aren’t enough of them to justify the 2.5-hour running time or the endless hours of empty chatter that’s either rehashing the events of the first film or setting up events in this film that are easily predictable. Even with the great Denzel chewing up every stone of the very expensive production design, the whole film feels like an epic slog that doesn’t have the guts or inclination to fully drive home the modern metaphors about the corruptive force of power or how those at the highest places in government don’t care at all about the people they rule.
Mescal is fast becoming one of our best actors, but his only speed here is Angry, and even the discovery of his parentage doesn’t give him any real wisdom or temperament shift. Like so many in Gladiator II, he’s got one note and gives us very little in terms of characters arc to let us root for him properly and satisfactorily.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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